According to The Wall Street Journal, the company informed its employees last week that it has officially abolished the long-standing "six-month vesting cliff" policy. Under the previous rules, employees had to work at the company for a full six months before they could begin to receive stock vesting; if they left within six months, they would not receive any stock rewards.

This "cliff-style" vesting clause was once common among startups in Silicon Valley, aiming to reduce the risk of equity waste caused by early employees leaving quickly. However, as the competition for AI talent intensifies, such restrictions have increasingly been seen as obstacles to hiring flexibility. OpenAI's cancellation of this policy means new employees can now gradually gain stock vesting from their first day, enhancing the attractiveness and fairness of the compensation package.

OpenAI, artificial intelligence, AI

This move may reflect OpenAI's strategic adjustment in the face of intense talent competition. Faced with competitors like Google, Meta, and Anthropic continuously offering high salaries to poach talent, as well as personnel turnover within internal teams due to intense R&D schedules and strategic differences, OpenAI is optimizing its incentive mechanisms to retain key team members. Especially against the backdrop of critical projects such as GPT-5, the Agent system, and hardware entering their final stages, retaining top talent has become more urgent than ever.

Notably, this adjustment also corresponds with the governance structure changes following OpenAI's transition from a non-profit organization to a for-profit entity. As the company's valuation surges and its commercialization path becomes clear, equity has become a core tool for aligning employees' long-term interests with those of the company. Removing the "vesting cliff" is both an immediate recognition of the value of talent and a signal from OpenAI to participate in the global AI talent competition with a more open and competitive posture.